Chapter II. The Great Mass of Believers

0 Israel! quam magna est tlonius Del. — Baruch.

It is sweet to think of the wen of love which God is hourly weaving round every soul He has created on the earth. If we bring the world before us with all its picturesque geography, the many indentations of its coasts, the long courses of its fertile rivers, its outspread plains, its wide forests, its blue mountain chains, its aromatic islands, and its verdant archipelagos, it enlarges the heart to think how round every soul of man God is weaving that web of love. The busy European, the silent Oriental, the venturous American, the gross Hottentot, the bewildered Australian, the dark-soulcd Malay, — He comes to all. He has His own way with each; but with all it is a way of tenderness, forbearance, and lavish generosity. The variety of their circumstances, and those are well nigh numberless, are not so many as the varieties of His sedulous affection. The biography of each of those souls is a miraculous history of God's goodness. If we could read them, as probably the Blessed can, they would teach us almost a new science of God, so wonderfully and inexhaustibly would they illuminate His different perfections. "We should see Him winding invisible threads of light and love even round the ferocious idolater. We should behold Him dealing with cases of the most brutal wickedness, the most fanatical delusion, the most stolid insensibility, and even for these arranging all things with the exquisite delicacy of creativo love. But so astonishing, so overwhelming is the flood of divine light, such and so vast the very ocean of eternal predilection, which He has poured upon His Church, that all outside looks like utter darkness because of the dazzlinj.- excess of her magnificence. This blinds us so that we can not see how what looks so dark to us is after all a true light lightening every man that comes into the world.

Let us turn our thoughts then to the Church. What a comfort it is to think of the vastness of the Church, and of her holiness! There is the incessant action of those mighty Sacraments, and the whole planet transfigured with the daily Mass. There is all heaven busy, as if time was too short for it, with a hundred occupations for each Christian soul, set in motion at that soul's request, or self-moved by gratuitous love and pity. Mary, Angels, Saints, and suffering Souls in purgatory, all are hard at work. God is employed, as if His Sabbath after creation were long since past. There are sorrows to be soothed, temptations to be banished, sins to be forgiven, tears to be dried, pains to be healed, good works to be assisted, death-beds to be attended; and the bright throngs in heaven, like some religious Order of Mercy, are busy at them all. 0 happy we! on whom all this dear diligence is thus perpetually expended!

What is the fruit of it all? If salvation is easy, and salvation is preached in the Church of Christ, then it ought to follow that the great majority of catholics are saved. We need speak only of catholics. We will not advert, however, distantly to those outside the Church. People tempt themselves about them, and play tricks with their gift of faith for which they ought to be thanking God their whole lives long. We have no business to concern ourselves with God's relations to others: however wistfully the ties of love may make us gaze upon that dark abyss. We are catholics. Let us be content with speculating about ourselves. We will suppose, therefore, the objection to be made, that if salvation is easy, then practically we ought to find that most catholics are saved. It is not enough to say that though salvation is easy, the corruption of man is so tremendous that little conies of it; for then it seems a question of words to call salvation easy. Salvation is the saving of fallen man, and, therefore, to be really easy, it must far more than counterbalance his corruption. The question is one of too momentous a character, of too thrilling an interest, for us to be content with mere rhetoric. We repeat, If salvation is easy, most catholics must be saved. Can we venture to say that such is our belief?

Before answering so abrupt a question, we must be allowed a few words of prelude. You are asking us what we think about one of God's secrets, a secret which He has reserved to Himself. It is one of those questions into which we may venture reverently to enquire, in the hope of finding fresh traces of His omnipresent love: but for no other reason than this. We may enquire that we may love; we may not enquire that we may know. It does not seem that we anger Him by such an investigation, provided we are humble. But we must remember we can decide nothing. After all our surmises, inferences, and guesses, the truth remains, as it was before, hidden with God. Wc have, however, in spite of much natural reluctance, a reason for entering into it, which seems to constrain Us to it as to a work of mercy. Outside the Church the dreadful error of the day, which is ravaging the hearts of men, is a forgetfulness that they are creatures. They seem in a certain way to remember the Creator, but, as was said in the first chapter, in politics, in science, in literature, in all the departments of the world's greatness, they seem not to realize that they are creatures. Now this error reaches faintly and feebly into the hearts of true believers. There is always in the Church a kind of evil echo of the noise which the world is making without But it is not more than an echo. Hence the spiritual physicians of the times come across an unusual amount of suffering, which good souls feel, from doubts about their relations with God, questionings of His justice and His goodness which will hardly be silenced, and which it were wild work, and almost ruin, to try to silence by main force. Such men find a difficulty in their most intimate religious life, for which we can think of no name. It is not simply temptation against the faith. It is not a disgust with the spiritual life. It does not seem to rest in the will at all, but in some perversity of the mind which is so humble that it is a shame to call it by so hard a name as perversity. We believe it to be an habitual incapacity of realizing that they are creatures, in the full truth and all the bearings of that idea. The inability might be brought on in these days by much and incautious reading of newspapers, or by an absorbing interest in the politics of the day, or by being mixed up with the existing commercial system of the world, or by not having always been catholics, or by having misused the first graces of conversion, or from sheer want of generosity with God. But it is a shadow, or an echo, or a taint in the believer's heart, of the prevailing pestilence of modern society. Just as in the presence of a cognizable plague we have frequently a mild form of some congenial disease, so does the sickness of the times infect even many of the faithful with a languor of a somewhat similar description. It is because I have been called to so many cases of this sort, that I have composed the present treatise, happy if I may be allowed to console one afflicted brother, or to ease one tempted soul, or to enlighten one bewildered mind, more happy than I can say if I can get from one of the creatures, whom He loves so well, an additional degree of love for our compassionate Creator. It may be said that the view contained in the preceding chapters is taking God's side exclusively, and putting forward only a one-sided statement. But this is not really true; however we are not concerned to argue the point. "We look only to a practical result. But what in truth is it which forms the chief part of the suffering to the souls just now described? It is that they will obstinately look only at one side of the question, and the side which co> cerns them least, instead of that which concerns them most, as that which God puts before them; and that they will pertinaciously extend the difficulty by bringing in a number of problems, in the solution of which they individually have no interest at all, and which they can hardly investigate, at least in their temper of mind, without forgetting what is due to God. They seem to have no eye, except for dark possibilities. They have a morbid hankering to climb giddy heights, to loiter on the edge of precipices, to balance themselves on the craters of volcanoes. They who love danger shall perish in it. We had better let God's thunderbolts alone, and not meddle with them, were it even to feel the sharpness of their fiery points. We only ask these poor sufferers now to look at the other side of the question; and not only to look at it, but to pray about it, and meditate on it, and familiarize themselves with it. Mere reading is nothing. A religious enquiry without prayer is a mockery of God. We can define nothing. We can unriddle none of God's secrets. But these souls have fed on gloomy considerations until they are almost poisoned. Now let us invite them to follow us patiently through the brighter considerations which commend themselves to an opposite temper and disposition, and which if not of greater weight than their own views, are at least of equal authority with theirs, besides the additional recommendation of their sunshine.

With this prefatory caution and admonition we may proceed therefore to answer the question thus: — We are inclined to believe, that most catholics are ultimately saved.

Of course we do not know it, and we do not wish to know it. But as the objection is started, we look attentively at the Church as far as we have the power, and the result of our observations is, that to the best of our belief the great majority of her children save their souls. We will give our reasons, one by one, for this conclusion, begging the reader once more to remember that we are not laying down the law, and that the necessities of many souls have beguiled us into an enquiry, upon which of ourselves we should never have dreamed of entering.¹

There seems to be a sort of dishonesty in putting forward the view which is to occupy this chapter, without confessing that the authority of theologians, so far as there can be any authority in a question of this nature, is upon the whole on the other side, while the authority of Scripture seems to be with us. Very many writers appear to hold that the number of the reprobate very far exceeds the number of the saved, not only taking the heathen into account, but taking heretics into account also — and not only taking heretics into account, but also the baptized infants of the faithful, •whose deaths are said nearly to equal those of adult catholics, and also the infants of heretics who have received baptism; so that, in their viewT, the question is narrowed to adult catholics, and of these, perhaps most writers venture to say that only a minority are saved. Recupitus, the Jesuit, in his treatise on the Number of the Predestinate, enumerates Lyra, Denys the Carthusian, Maldonatus, Cajetan, Bellarmine, Fasolus, Alvarez, Iluiz, Smising, Drexelius, and perhaps Molina, as holding this opinion, together with most of the Fathers of the Church. Sylvester, Carthagena, Granadus, Franciscus de Christo, are quoted on the other side. Suarez, who on the whole seems to be on the milder side, expressly includes the infants, and so does Lorinus, in his commentary on the hundred and thirty-eighth psalm.²

Cajetan, expounding the parable of the virgins, teaches that even of those who live moderately well in the Church, and take a certain amount of care of their consciences, one half are lost. Suarez stigmatizes this opinion as "exceedingly rigorous M He then says, M It is a doubtful matter, but I think a distinction should be made. By the name of Christians we may understand all those who glory in the name of Christ, and profess to believe in Him, although many of them are heretics, apostates, and schismatics. Now speaking in this way it seems to me probable that the greater part of them are reprobate, and it is in this general way that I understand the less mild opinion. Now as heretics and apostates have always been very numerous, if we add to them the number of the faithful who make bad deaths, the two together will plainly exceed the number of those who die well. But if by Christians we understand those only who die in the Catholic Church, it seems to me more likely, in the law of grace, that the greater number of them are saved. The reason is, because, first of all, of those who die before they are adults, the great multitude die baptized; and as to the adults, although the majority of men often sin mortally, yet they often rise again from sin, and thus pass their lives rising and falling. Then again there are but few, who are not prepared for death by the Sacraments, and grieve for their sins at least by attrition; and this is enough to justify them at that time, and after their justification, the time left them is so short that they can easily persevere, and do so, without any fresh mortal sin. Therefore, all things considered, it is probable that the mnjority of Christians in this stricter sense are saved." *

Vasquez considers it clear from Scripture that the number of the lost is greater than the number of the saved; but he adds that there may be a doubt about the faithful, and that some piously think that the majority of them are saved, and that the Sacraments of the Church, as well as the parable of the wedding garment, look that way. He himself however refuses to take either side.f Even Billuart will not allow to the theologians quoted by Recupitus any more certain foundations for their opinion than for that of their adversaries. % Cornelius a Lapide argues at length against the³ benignant conclusion of Suarez, and says that the greater number of living theologians at Rome in his day thought the general laxity of morals in the world a strong proof that the sterner opinion was also the more correct. \ The Blessed Leonard of Port Maurice maintains, in his sermon for the third Sunday in Lent, that a great number of Christians are lost, because

2b⁴⁵⁶ their confessions are null through want of true sorrow.⁷ St. Alphonso on the contrary says, in his Istruzione al predieatori, that he holds it for certain that of all those who come to the sermons at a mission, whosoever should die within a year, would with difficulty be lost.f

According to the rigid view, if the deceased baptized infants of the faithful, together with the deceased baptized infants of heretics, added to the adult Catholics who are saved, do not make a majority, and if also the statement be true % that the deaths of the children of catholics nearly equal in number, as Ruiz says, the deaths of adult catholics, then must the number of adults who are saved be so small, that it follows that the Church of the redeemed in heaven, the conquest of our Blessed Saviour's Precious Blood, is chiefly composed of children, of those who on earth never merited, never loved, never used their reason at all. Is not this a conclusion so repugnant as to be inadmissible?

P. Lacordaire has treated the subject with his usual power, and also with great delicacy, in his discourse on the results of the Divine Government, which forms part of his Conferences of 1851. He inclines to believe that a majority of mankind are saved, and dwells especially on children, women, and the -poor. His exposition of the Scripture argument is very remarkable and ingenious, especially his view of the text. Few are chosen, from the light shed upon it by the context in the two places in which that passage occurs. Bergier, speaking of the number of the elect, says, "A solid and sufficiently instructed mind will not allow itself to be shaken by a prob-

• Quaresimale, p. 195.

X Le tiers des cnfims meurt entre la premiere et la septiemc annSe de sa naissanee, plus de la moitie entre la premiere et la quatorzieme ann6e.— Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes.

lematical opinion;" and again, after describing the disagreement of the Fathers and commentators on the subject, he adds, " If the parables of the Gospel might be taken as proofs, we should rather conclude that the greater, not the less, number would be saved. Jesus Christ compares the separation of the good and bad at the last judgment, to the division of the good grain from the cockle. Now, in a field cultivated with care, the cockle is never more abundant than the wheat. He compares it to the separation of the bad fish from the good; now to what fisher did it ever happen to take fewer good fish than bad? Of ten virgins called to the marriage five are admitted to the company of the spouse. In the parable of the talents two servants are recompensed, one only is punished-; in that of the feast, only one of the guests is rejected." * Da Ponte, in his treatise on Christian Perfection, seems also to lean to the milder opinion; and Lipsin, the Franciscan, in his catechism maintains that the opinion in favor of the majority of catholics being saved is the " more probable," and more "consonant to the glory of Cod, the merits of Christ, and the hopes of men:"f and Lipsin says expressly that he is speaking only of adults.

The interpretation given by F. Lacordaire of the words, Many are called, but few are chosen, rests entirely on the two contexts in which the passage occurs. In the twentieth chapter of St. Matthew the kingdom of heaven is compared to a father of a family who hires laborers into his vineyard at successive hours of the day, and then when the evening comes, all are rewarded, and all receive the same reward, notwithstanding the inequalities of their time of labor. Those, who came early in the day, complain, and the⁸⁹ master answers that he has given them what he agreed to give, that he has a right to do what he likes with his own, that the last shall be first and the first last, and that many are called, but few chosen. Now it is clear that the difficulty of this parable does not consist in the small number who are recompensed, but in the inequality of the recompense. The conclusion, that there ar« but few who are saved, would have no connection whatever with the parable. It seems rather to mean that many, who are called by a common grace, from being the first become the last, while a few, who are chosen by a special grace, from being last become first. In the twenty-second chapter of the same Gospel, the kingdom of heaven is compared to a king who makes a marriage-feast for his son. The guests refuse to come. Whereupon the king sends his servants out into the highways and byeways to bring in a mixed multitude to the feast. Of all these only one is rejected; and that, because he has not on a wedding garment. Cast him out, says the king, into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are called but few are chosen. Now here again the difficulty of the parable cannot consist in the few who are definitely admitted and remain to enjoy the feast; for, miscellaneous multitude as they are, there is but one rejected. If in such circumstances as these, it is said that many are called, but few chosen, what can it mean but that there are few who receive such a special grace as permits them to behave with more familiarity than others in divine things, or to count I on an unusual favor of God in their regard? It is the temptation of some, says the great Dominican, who aro called as it were by chance upon the highway of life to re-replace other guests who were invited and have not come, to persuade themselves that they are the objects of God's special predilection, and to neglect to make their calling sure by an exact fidelity; and it is our Lord's object in this parable to teach them, that if on the one hand there are last who become first, on the other hand no man must dare to presume it of himself.*

Here is a whole mass of conflicting opinions, not perhaps very clear. Let us now do the best we can to collect the suffrages of theologians in this matter. The controversy seems to stand in some such attitude as this: —

1. Many writers hold that the majority of mankind will be lost, because heathen, and unbelievers, and heretics make up a majority.

2. Some hold that a majority of all mankind, taking heathen, heretics, and Christians in one mass, will be saved.

• Salmeron (t. vii. tr. 33) and Cornelius a Lapide (on Matt, xx.) give similar interpretations. Cornelius a Lapide says many are called to ordinary grace aud the observance of the commandments, and few to the observance of the counsels, Bcrgier, in his treatise de la Religion, quoted as a note in Migne's edition of the same author's dictionary, says, "Parmi les commentateurs, point d'uniformite. Pour ne parlor que des catholiques, Cajetan. Mariana, Tostat, Luc de Bruges, Maldonat, Corneille de la Pierre, Menochius, le pere de Picquigny, admettent l'une et l'autre explication; entendent par elus ou les hommes saues, ou les fideles. Jansenius de Gaud pcnse que ce dernier sens est le plus naturel: Stapleton le soutient contra Calvin; Sacy, dans ses Commentaires, juge que c'est le sens litteral; dom Calmet semble lui donner la preference. Euthymius n'en donne point d'autre; il suivait S. Jean Chrysostome. Le pere Hardouin soutient que c'est le soul sens qui s'accorde avec la suite du texte; le pere Berruyer exclut aussi tout autre sens; c'est pour celaqu'il a etc condamne, mais la faculte.de theologie n'a certainment pas voulu censurer les interpretes catholiques que nous venons de citer, et ils sont suivis par beaucoup d'autres. Quel dogme peut on fonder sur un passage susceptible de deux sens si differents? And again he says, Pour fixer un peu plus cette discussion, nous disons qu'il y a trois opinions sur le nombre des catholiques predestines. Quelques docteurs pensent qu'il y aura plus de catholiques elus que de reprouves; ils se fondent sur ce qu'il n'y a eu qu'un seul convive exclu du banquet nuptial. ^D'autres croient qu'il y aura autant de reprouv6s que d'elus. Ils se fondent sur le parable des Vierges, dont cinq etaient sages et cinq folles.— La plupart des theologiens enseignent qu'il y aura plus de reprouves que d'elus. Ils s'appuient sur ces paroles: Pauci vero electi. II n'y a done rien de certain a ce sujet. Le savant Suarei» jegarde la premiere comme plus probable.

2b2

3. Some, to enhance their rigorous view, maintain that the children are to be taken into the account, and yet even so a majority of mankind will be lost, or, in other words, that very few adults will be saved.

4. Some, to enhance their mild views, maintain that the children may be put out of the reckoning, and yet that even so a majority of mankind will be saved.

5. None of these views regard Catholics exclusively.

6. Of those writers who regard Catholics exclusively, some maintain, that, even taking the children into account, the majority will be lost.

7. Others maintain, that the majority will be saved, but the majority is only to be reached by reckoning in the children: this is perhaps the most common view of all.

8. Others hold, that looking at adult Catholics only, as many will be lost as are saved; this opinion is founded on the Parable of the Virgins.

9. Others teach, that the far greater majority of adult Catholics will be lost.

10. Others think, that a small majority of adult Catholics will be saved.

11. Others finally, to whose opinion I strongly adhere myself, believe that the great majority of adult Catholics, perhaps nearly all of them, will be saved.

12. In point of theologians, the rigorous opinions regarding the whole mass of mankind have an overwhelming authority.

13. The rigorous opinions concerning the damnation of the majority of adult Catholics have more theologians on their side than the milder view.

14. But if we subtract moral, ascetical, and hortatory nuthors, who write to rouse and to impress their readers, and retain only pure theologians in the stricter sense, I think the authorities on the two sides will be not far from evenly balanced, the excess being however in favor of the rigorous views.

15. The more recent theologians also exhibit a leaning to the milder view; and in many cases the rigorous views are held in conjunction with opinions on the ultimate state of unbaptized infants, which probably no single Catholic in the church now-a-days would hesitate to disclaim.

16. Some of the authorities on the milder side are of very great weight.

17. In the use of the Scripture argument the triumph is completely, and most remarkably, on the milder side. Indeed, the Scripture proof seems quite unmanageable in the hands of the rigorists.

Thus then it appears, that the question is completely an open one, and that the view, which is to occupy this chapter, is not only lawful, but pious. Nevertheless, if I could persuade myself that the discussion had but little practical bearing on a holy life, I should eagerly avoid entering upon it. It seems, however, as if the inquisitive infidelity of the day had so far touched the faith of many good men, that questions have been started in their thoughts which mere contempt cannot now put to silence, and that in order to restore to their diseased minds a more true view of the fatherly character of God, it is necessary to bring before them distinct considerations, founded upon what we know of Him, in opposition to those darker reflections which keep them back from a cordial surrender of themselves to God, and which even when they are true, become untrue by claiming to be exclusive. Begging then of God to bless this inquiry concerning a secret, which for our good as well as His own glory He has hidden from us, let us proceed reluctantly upon our way.

We know well that, when men judge others, whether individuals or multitudes, they generally come to an erroneous conclusion, from the mere fact that they judge over-

S20 THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS.

harshly. It is part of the evil that is in us, to put the worst construction upon what wc see, and to make no allowance for the hidden good. Moreover, we, unwittingly almost, judge by the worst parts of our own disposition, not by the best. We believe our evil to be common to all, and our good peculiar to ourselves. We consider evil a decisive test, while good is only allowed to establish a possibility. This is our rule for others: we reverse it for ourselves. We also find that our judgments get milder in proportion to the increase of our own strictness. The judgments of holy men sometimes astonish us by their laxity, while men, not even frequenting the sacraments, or in any way professing to be religious, will be scandalized by the least look of worldliness in a priest or a religious. They will detect, with the most amazing sensitiveness, the slightest inconsistency in the practice of au openly devout person. Thus, we may lay it down as a rule, that the severity of our judgments of others, even where judgments are legitimate and unavoidable, is an infallible index of the lovvness of our own spiritual state. The more severe we are, the lower we arc. We must, therefore, be on our guard against this well-known infirmity, in the present inquiry. There is something in the adorable compassion of God which looks like voluntary blindness. He seems either not to see, or not to appreciate, the utter unworthiness of men; at least, lie goes on His way with men as though He did not see it. The Bible is full of instances of this. Now, the more we are with God, and the closer our union with Him is, the more shall we catch something of a similar spirit, which will destroy the natural keenness of our detection of evil, and control more materially our judgments of our fellow-men.

We must be careful, also, to make a distinction which is often forgotten, and which bears directly upon the present question. What we see around us, among catholics, may

THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS. 'J21 be far from satisfactory; and the authentic statistics which reach us from catholic countries, may contain much that is unhappy and disheartening. Yet we must distinguish, at any given moment, between catholics not living so as to be saved, and their not being ultimately saved at last. In other words, we cannot go altogether by what we see. Immense numbers are converted, and go to the sacraments, and persevere in their new life; and then they are less prominent. We do not hear of them. The statistics of Easters, jubilees, retreats, missions, and the like, come less under our notice than statistics of crime or misery. Sin strikes us, and is startling; whereas, ordinary goodness is a tame affair, and passes unobserved. Then there are multitudes of men who have an exceedingly bad chapter in their lives, some ten or twenty years of wickedness, and then change, as if the volcanic matter in them had burned out. This is what meD lightly call sowing their wild oats. As one set of these men passes into a better state, another is succeeding them; so that the appearance of things is an incessant current of headstrong sin, sweeping all before it, unredeemed by the hopeful features of the case which the succession of sinners hides effectually from our view. Moreover, old age withdraws its thousands of actors from the stage of sin, and so they disappear from view. It is wretched enough to think of these conversions of old age, which seem to have more of nature in them than of grace. A man's passions are worked out. He becomes a moral wreck. The avenues of sensual pleasure are closed to him, by the aches and pains and dull insensibilities of age. In a number of cases, the very powers of sinning are diminished. And so, what with fear, what with disgust, and what with making a virtue of necessity, the old man gives himself to God, such little of him as is left, and God accepts the gift. It is not for us to criticise this amazing forbearance of God: who knows if we may not one day 21 stand in need of it ourselves? But so it is. It is God'i affair; and in His infinite wisdom He is pleased to take the offering, and to save the soul. Multitudes, again, even before old age, fall into sickness, in the prime of life and the middle of their sins, and they pass out of the outer ■world of men into the inner world of the priest, that world half visible and half invisible, where daily miracles of grace are wrought, and where the weary minister of God is forever drawing those earthly consolations which aro more to him than the dearness of domestic affections, and support him sweetly in his incessant toils. God partly admits him to His secrets, and takes him into the inner room of sickness, and shows him the machinery of salvation doing its finest and most hidden work.

"While we are gazing at this picture, we must not forget to realize (and it is no easy matter) what we have seen in a former chapter, how little God actually requires as absolutely indispensable to salvation. One confession at the hour of death, ordinary fidelity in confessing, a purpose of amendment which has no temptation then to be insincere, a very moderate sorrow, with huge allowances made for the clouded weariness and distracting unsettlements of pain, and the soul that has spent close upon a century of sin is saved, saved because God puts the requisites for absolution so low, saved because by His merciful ordinance faith survived grace for all those years, saved because the Precious Blood of Jesus is such a superabundant ransom, such a mighty conqueror of souls. When a man is converted, he has to make little outward change, so far as the eyes of men are concerned, in his ordinary life. Few will notice that he has begun to go to mass. Few see him enter the confessional, or kneel at the altar rail. Men are never very sedulous in finding out good, and it will even be some time before it is perceived that habits of swearing, or lying, or intemperance, are gone, or that violence of temper has passed away. Moreover, the convert has relapses, and somehow these are always very much seen and noticed, and they conceal completely the gradual formation of a virtuous habit; and, besides this, a great deal which is externally disagreeable, and also morally unworthy, will remain, and almost hide a man's conversion even from his wife and child. It is not, generally, mortal sin which makes men so unbearable to others. It is more often selfishness, and temper, and churlishness, and ferocity, and coarseness, and such like, which may all be far short of mortal sin, or, in the cases of rude persons, of any sin at all. There is, also, much in the demeanor of a converted sinner which is very puzzling. He has had certain habits of sin; and, though he no longer falls into the mortal sins in question, he has ways about him which simulate the old habit of sin. He talks as if he was still under its dominion. He omits things which a man would characteristically omit, if he had such a habit. He even falls into venial sins congenial to the old habit; and it may often happen that it shall look as if outward circumstances alone prevented his positively committing the old mortal sin. But it would be endless to enumerate all the things which baffle our judgment of the insincerity of a man's conversion. We may depend upon it, that, in a thousand spots F^hich look desert, waste, and fire-blackened, God's mercy is finding pasture for His glory.

It is very observable that evil is of its own nature much more visible than good, while goodness is invisible like God. Evil, like the world, is loud, rude, anxious, hurried, and ever acting on the defensive; while goodness partakes of the nature of Him who alone is truly good. It imitates His ways of secresy and concealment, and is impregnated with His Spirit of unostentatious tranquillity and self-sufficient contentment. The infuriated mob that burns down a church, and tramples the Blessed Sacrament under foot, is a much more obvious and obtrusive phenomenon than tho dozen Carmelite nuns who have been doing the world's hardest work for it before that tabernacle door for years. The whole priesthood of the Church, busy at its work of mercy, catches the eye much less than a single regiment in scarlet, marching down upon its fellow Christians. Even in the individual this invisible character of goodness is perceptible, and that not merely in the shy spirit and instinctive bashfulncss of great sanctity, but even without a man's intending it, or being aware of it, or taking any pains about it. When we know and love a man, and are in habits of daily familiar intercourse with him, we know his faults almost in a week. We learn where to distrust him, and where he, is not unlikely to fail. But the revelation of his goodness is a very slow process, lie is continually taking us by surprise with disclosures of virtues which we never dreamed that he possessed. He comes out on great occasions much better than we expected. In little things too and the ordinary wear and tear of life it is only by degrees that we become conscious how much real humility, patience, sweetness, and unselfishness there is about him. There are very few men whom we do not come by experience to respect, if only we continue to love them. If, as Wordsworth says, all things are less dreadful than they seem, so is it true that all men are better than they seem. We must allow very largely for this, when we look at the lives of catholics, and pass a judgment on the likelihood of their salvation.

The visible character of evil also brings strongly before us one of the most frightening features of the world, and one which it is hard to dwell upon for any length of time without some amount of gloom passing on our spirits. It is the ceaseless activity of Satan. His activity is appalling: his presence almost ubiquitous: his tyranny universal, overwhelming, and successful. Of a truth he needs no repose.

To go and lie down upon his bed of fire would be no rest to bim. Thus the world seems to be always in a storm of his creating. One while he is persecuting the good, even in the cloister. Another while he is bent on ruining some man who is doing a notable work for God. Now he is urging on the multitudes of a whole country, and making them drunk with the spirit of anarchy and sacrilege. Now he is quietly weaving webs of unholy diplomacy, with a fair show of equity or patriotism, around the Holy See, that he may cramp its energies for good, and demoralize whole nations. Here he is getting up an intricate slander which shall throw discredit on God's servants, and dishonor the cause of religion. There he is sapping the foundations of a religious order by the insidious prudence of relaxation, or destroying the stability of some grand work of mercy by leading the founders to seek their own reputation and glory in it instead of God's. One while he is inspiring the press, and hiding the poison that he spreads under the rhetoric of morality and right. Another while he is artfully providing for coldness, dissension, and misunderstanding among those whose power for God consisted in the cordiality of their union. Even the chosen of the earth, the holy and the good, are running to and fro upon the earth, till they are weary, doing Satan's work and dreaming it is God's. Who can look on such a scene without disquiet and dismay? But then we must remember the prominent visible character of evil. Satan is active: can we suppose that God is not ten thousand times more active, even though we see Him less? The very reason why we see Him so little is because we do not follow Him, and search out His ways, and trace the footprints of His operations. If we did we should be astonished at the immensity, the vigor, and the versatility of the magnificent spiritual work which He is doing all over the world in every year. Just as science tells us that the earth's sur- 2c face is never still, but that some portion of it somewhere all day and night is quaking and vibrating with the pulsations of the forces bound up within the centre of the planet, so to the observant and discerning eye of faith the whole natural world of created wills and ways is tremulous and troubled by the forces of the supernatural world, now forcing their way to the surface, now engulfing whole regions, now raising lofty summits of new mountains out of deep valleys, and now altering the very features of civilization by diverting the mighty currents of the mind and purpose of humanity.

If the vigor of God abides with such intensity in every particle of the inanimate world, everywhere wedding strength to beauty, so that the union might captivate with its exquisite niceties the intelligence of angels, if in every mineral atom He rules intimately by His presence, His essence, and His power, how much more shall we believe that He informs and controls the world of men by the energies of an allwise providence, whose majestic operations have all of them the one single scope and end of love for their blissful accomplishment? We have already seen enough of the doctrine of grace to be aware to what an almost incredible extent it discloses the divine activity. Temptation is feeble, languid, intermittent, and inert, compared with this. Satan grows weary, even though he cannot rest, while the perseverance of grace is incomparable, like the freshness of that eternal mercy from which it emanates. Moreover we know that Satan is bound by the coming of our Lord. The little Babe of Bethlehem circumscribed his monstrous empire. If he is as wild and fierce as ever, he has now found the length of his chain, and beyond that his fury is unavailing. Even within his greatly lessened sphere, the Cross of Christ is a perpetual torture, an endless defeat to his malicious wiles. The very presence of the Church is an unbroken exorcism to the baffled prince of darkness. Her benedictions keep extruding him from one corner of creation after another. Her exorcisms dispossess him even of the hidden spiritual strongholds in which he craves to keep his court. Her holy presences are tortures to him, worse, some of them at least, than the fires of that abyss which is the fallen creature's home. Up and down all lands St. Raphael is for ever binding him in the upper uninhabitable parts of the spiritual Egypt. Who then can believe that in God's own cloistered dwelling place, the sanctuary of His Church, Satan's activity will prevail against His, and that He will be defeated even where His choice most loves to dwell? Satan broke into the first paradise of God, when he was young, and before the Cross of Christ had bound him, and what followed? The saving of Adam and of Eve by a more copious salvation, the superabundance of redeeming grace, the glorious reign of the Queen of the Immaculate Conception, and the total triumph of the Incarnate Word! Much more will like consequences follow now. We must not tremble too much at Satan's power. He is under our feet already. We are stronger far than he. We must remember the story of the servant of Eliseus in the fourth book of Kings. The servant of the man of God, rising early, went out, and saw an army round about the city, and horses, and chariots; and he told him, saying, Alas, alas, alas, my lord, what shall we do? But he answered, Fear not: for there are more with us than with them. And Eliseus prayed, and said, Lord, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw, and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire, round about Eliseus.

The very inconceivable magnificence of God would lead us to suppose that the number of the saved, which is one of the greatest glories of His creation, would be something far beyond our utmost expectations. Has it not been so in every experience we have ever had of God? Has He not always outdone His own promises, as well as outstripped our imaginations? Have not His gifts always come in an embarrassing abundance? Have we ever formed an expectation of mercy or of grace, which has not been fulfilled far beyond our hopes, as if not even our necessities, much less our merits, but His own liberality, were the rule of answered prayer? Is it likely to be less so, or are we likely to find God changed all at once, in a matter, in which not only our happiness, but the honor of His dear Son and the interests of His own wonderful glory, are so exceedingly involved? There is something so uncongenial in the thought, that it surely cannot be received unless it be revealed. There is no word which describes His love of us as our Creator so faithfully as magnificence, and will His love as our Last End be less magnificent, less efficacious in the triumph of its glorious attractions? There is no word to express His prodigal expenditure in our redemption, except magnificence; can we conceive, in a divine work, of a magnificence in the design which shall not be equalled by magnificence in the execution? No one doubts that hell will be unspeakably more dreadful than we expected; because no one doubts but that our little views will be found foolishly narrow when compared with the transcendent realities of God. So will it be found with our notions of the number of the saved. Yet, when we think of what the catholic church is, and of all the privileges involved in being a catholic, it seems only reasonable to expect that on the whole far more of them would be saved than lost. There is no magnificence in this idea. There would be a sense of failure and incompleteness in the opposite opinion. No one can think steadily and continuously on the matter without coming to this conclusion. But of necessity, because He is Himself, God will go far'out of sight of our beliefs in the actual splendor of His accomplishments. So that from what we know of God we should augur that very few catholics, comparatively speaking, would be lost. The salvation of almost all of them seems to be claimed by tli3 very magnificence of God. He is a bold man, who, without the Church to back him, believes that God's own gift of free will, which He has mysteriously allowed to do Him so much injury in time, shall have a final and complete victory Dver Him for eternity; and if God is love, which is of faith, then hell will be no victory to Him.

The honor of the Precious Blood would imply and require as much as the magnificence of God. It is a hard saying that the majority of those for whom it was shed should be lost eternally. We are purposely turning our eyes away from all without the Church, saying nothing, defining nothing, hinting nothing, guessing nothing! It is not our concern. But how hard will it be to say that of those souls, who have been actually washed in it again and again, the majority are lost. It has cleansed them in baptism, and printed an ineffaceable character upon their brows. It has absolved them again and again. It has run through them with thrills of fervor and fortitude in confirmation. Its red living pulses have beaten with their human life within the heart at communion. Are we then to say that of those, who of all mankind have most trusted the Blood of Jesus, and have made most use of it, the majority are lost? What ground is there in dogmatic theology fcr an assertion so little to the honor of our dearest Lord? One drop is more than enough to redeem all the possible sins of all possible worlds, and yet oceans of it cannot succeed in redeeming the majority of the members of His Church! Who would hesitate at anything which the Church taught him to believe, and who would believe this unless the Church should teach it?

Then again, the action of the sacraments is probably much greater than we have any notion of. We learn a great deal that is very surprising from theology, enough to set us gratefully wondering at the ingenious excesses of

2o2 our Creator's love. But what we learn there rather shows us the extent of our ignorance than furnishes us with anything like a complete science. We may follow, first the school which teaches that the operation of the sacraments is moral, then the school which teaches that it is physical, and we are better and holier, because more loving, men for our researches. But have they not left us at a point beyond which, though we could get no further, we saw that sacramental grace was advancing far beyond us with an operation we could not comprehend, into recesses of which mystical theologians speak in grandiloquent words and with the abstrusest terms. When we discuss the deep of the soul, or the point of the spirit, or whether the character of a sacrament is set as a signet on the soul or on the faculties of the soul, we are at the end of our mind's tether, and grace has shot miles ahead, and is working grandly out of sight. All God's works are greater when we get to look into them, than they seemed at first. Especially must it be so with such supernatural works as His sacraments. It is conceivable that a clear view of the operation of the sacraments, both in themselves, and also retrospectively in our own souls, may be a not insignificant item in our future blessedness. One good communion is enough, they say, to make a saint. Now think what goes to the making of a saint, the numberless things, their inexhaustible variety, their positive contradictoriness, their unlikely combinations, the intricate wide-spreading possibilities of their perseverance; and what can the axiom mean, except that, not only the inward power of a sacrament, but its actual operation, goes farther and deeper than we can follow it? Look then at the numberless receptions of sacraments, which there are daily in the Church, and can you seriously believe that the result of it all is, that the majority of Catholics are not saved? 0 be sure you are estimating far too low the glorious efficacy of the divine interventions, the successful majesty of creative love!

Our ignorance of the last inward processes of death-beds leaves one of the most spacious portions of our lives inaccessible to our notice. Life is not counted only by material time. The world, and all its sights and sounds, too often leave little room for God in the hearts of men. But the hour of death is very spacious. It gives God room. It turns miriutes into }rears. It redoubles and redoubles the swift processes of the mind just on the eve of its ejection from the body. It is an hour of truth, and an hour of truth is longer than a century of falsehood. Heaven draws near to it, to help as well as to behold. It is God's last chance with His creature, and divine wisdom must know well how to use its chances. A man is freed from many laws, when time and space are visibly melting away in the white light of eternity, or rather he is being brought under wider and larger laws. He can live many lives within the compass of His agony. We know very little of what goes on then. The thick curtains of the glazed eye, of the expressionless or only pain-furrowed face, and of the inarticulate voice, are drawn round the last earthly audience between the Creator and the creature. But observation and psychology combine to teach us that much does go on, and of a far more intelligent nature, than we should otherwise conceive. " Really, according to my observations, " says Sir Benjamin Brodie,¹⁰ " the mere act of dying is seldom, in any sense of the word, a very painful process. It is true that some persons die in a state of bodily torture, as in cases of tetanus; that the drunkard, dying of delirium tremens, is haunted by terrific visions; and that the victim of that most horrible of all diseases, hydrophobia, in addition to those peculiar bodily sufferings from which the disease has derived its name, may be in a state of terror from the supposed presence of frightful objects — which are presented to him as realities, even to the last. But these and some other instances which I might adduce are exceptions to the general rule, which is, that both mental and bodily sufferings terminate long before the scene is finally closed. Then as to the actual fear of death; it seems to me that the Author of our existence, for the most part, gives it to us when it is intended that we should live, and takes it away from us when it is intended that we should die. Those who have been long tormented by bodily pain are generally as anxious to die as they ever were to live. So it often is with those whose life has been protracted to an extreme old age, beyond the usual period of mortality, even when they labor under no actual disease. It is not very common for any one to die merely of old age; —

" Like ripe fruit to drop Into Lis mother's lap."

But I have known this to happen; and a happy conclusion it has seemed to be of worldly cares and joys. It was like falling to sleep, never to awake again in this state of existence. Some die retaining all their faculties, and quite aware that their dissolution is at hand. Others offer no signs of recognition of external objects, so that it is impossible for us to form any positive opinion whether they do or do not retain their sensibility; and others, again as I have already stated, who appear to be insensible and unconscious, when carefully watched, are found not to be so in reality; but they die contentedly. I have myself never known but two instances in which, in the act of dying, there were manifest indications of the fear of death." In the life of Condren there is a very remarkable passage urging on us the duty of thanksgiving to God for the graces He bestows on the dying, inasmuch as "His compassion for them is inexplicable, and He seems to distribute His

Nfors to them all the more -willingly, because they are hardly now in danger of profaning them." Beautiful thought! 0 how much of the beauty of God's love is gathered round the dying bed, how much more than we can see, how much more than we believe! We grant that it is unknown ground; but because mercy is so much needed then, because mercy has had so many antecedents with the soul, because it is God's will it should be saved, and finally because God is such a God as we know Him well to be, we boldly claim all that unknown land of catholic death-beds for the simple sovereignty of the divine compassion. That hour may explain many inexplicable salvations. The gloomiest mind must admit, that it may have shrouded in it endless possibilities of salvation; and with such a God at such an hour the possibilities grow miraculously into probabilities, and forthwith disappear in those sweet sudden certainties with which the dying child of Jesus has fallen asleep upon its Father's bosom.

When we see a man sinning, we see his sin, but we can seldom see the excuses of his sin. This is a very important consideration in the present discussion, and has already been partially adverted to. The depths of invincible ignorance may underlie no inconsiderable region of a man's moral nature, and each individual character has an invincible ignorance belonging to itself. It is a thing we cannot possibly presume upon for ourselves, because a suspicion destroys it: but we may put much to its account in our neighbor's favor. Again, the violence of the temptation is invisible; and even if we saw it, we could not see the peculiar oppressiveness of it to another's heart, or its almost irresistible tyranny because of previous habits. Yet surely there are many cases in which the vehemence of the temptation is a mitigating circumstance in punishment, even if it be not actual plea for mercy. We must also have a thorough acquaintance with a man's peculiar turn of mind, the bent of his disposition, the circumstances of his past life, and, most of all, his early education, before we are at all in a condition to form an estimate of what his guilt ija in the sight of God.¹¹ Also men often fall, when they are in a good state, from a momentary self-trust, or a sudden assault of Satan, God permitting it for their greater good and more entire humility; and then a man's sin is an exceptional case, and we cannot argue from it to his habitual state. All these considerations, and many more which might be adduced, very much detract from the value of our observations on the sins of Catholics as proofs that by far the greater number of them are not ultimately saved.

This leads us to a further consideration. It can hardly be denied that men's actions are often worse than their hearts, even when they proceed from the heart; and they have often less heart in them than they seem to have. For instance, a man commits a sin in a sudden outburst of passion, that passion may have felt some peculiar sting in the provocation which another would not feel, and it may have fallen upon him when he was physically agitated or when his nerves were unstrung. For all this the sin may remain a sin, and yet be no fair index of the sinner's heart. Or, again, men are propelled into sin not unfrequently by false shame, by human respect, by bad company; and the man's heart may be far better all the while than its outward actions testify. Many a man looks to his neighbors a very monster of depravity, while the priest, who heard his general confession, has been almost touched to tears with the spots of green verdure, the almost feminine sensibilities, the refined kindnesses, but above all with the moral shyness, the ground of so many virtues, which he found in that great rough nature. Are we not learning every day to be less surprised at finding how so very much good can dwell with so very much evil? Then, again, many have so many odd crossings in their minds which tell upon their motives, and hamper the free action of their moral sense; and thus it is that cruelty in war, agrarian murders, and the like, are not on the whole such conclusive proofs of a depraved heart as they are commonly taken to be. Much crime lies at the door of a warped mind; and how much of that crime is sin can be known to God alone. The heart is the jewel which He covets for His crown, and if the heart which we do not see is better than the actions that we see, God be praised! for then the world is a trifle less dismal than it seems.

It was perhaps these and similar considerations of human charity, almost infinitely magnified by His Sacred Heart, which made Jesus on earth such a lover of sinners. Wo know well that His predeliction was for them. He came to seek and to save what was lost, and the more lost a soul was, the more especially He came to seek it and to save it. He seemed to prefer the society of sinners to any other; and all-holy as He was, it is wonderful how He contrived at once to exhibit His holiness and also to put sinners into so interesting a light; and He, which is much to be remembered, is the Judge at last. Those sinners, who came near Him in the Gospel and had intercourse with Him, seem to be almost His chosen souls. There is a poetry thrown around their memories, even in the case of the

33G THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS.

poor young man who did not follow Ilim, which is nothing else but the lustre of the Saviour's love. So is it always with the saints of Jesus. They are characterized by a hopeful view of sinners. They have a positive devotion to them, as our Lord had. The very power of the religious communities, which have to deal with the reformation of 6inners, consists at once in their tender love of them and their supernatural respect for them. Without this last quality even the charity of the spouses of Christ will be but intermittent, and lose the perfection of its beauty, the uniformity of its sweetness, and the power from God to accomplish and bring to a hnppy persevering issue the glorious work of conversion in the soul. In the place of the steadiness of grace, their works of mercy will have all the characteristics of capricious nature. 0! it is a Christlike thing to love sinners. But is not our love of them a piteous horror rather than true love, if our view of them is to be so depressing and overclouded, that we are to believe that the greater number even of catholics are not to be saved? Does not this peculiar tenderness, this almost devotion of our Blessed Lord, point to a far more cheering view? Pray, said the Carmelite prioress of Bcaunc to Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament, pray for this soul, though I cannot hope for its conversion. 0 Mother, replied Margaret, wherefore doubt the goodness of our God? Is not this to do Him a dishonor? Who has ever invoked the Holy Child Jesus without being heard? Now let us go and implore of Ilim the grace which you desire, and three days shall not pass before your wishes shall be gratified.

The saints look at sinners as saints themselves in possibility. Their hopefulness is the secret of their charity, fheir humility also, which gives them a clear view of the excess of God's grace over the amount of their own correspondence, makes them slow to believe that others, even

THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS. o37 with less grace, will not surpass their own attainments. Thus they come to believe, what the experience of those versed in the affairs of souls abundantly establishes, that conversion is one of the most common phenomena of grace. It is the sort of thing to be expected of grace, the ordinary occurrence which comes as a matter of course, just as the sun warms, or the frost chills, or the water wets us, or the fire burns us. Now we have already seen the immense abundance of grace, with which heaven inundates the earth, and if conversion is quite an ordinary occurrence with it, and sinners alone can strictly speaking be the subjects of conversion, it follows that the great mass of apparently unworthy catholics is the chosen theatre of one of the strongest as well as the commonest of the operations of grace. Thus it is that apostolic zeal, with its enlightened love, looks at sinners as the materials for the future triumphs of Jesus, as the harvest yet ungarnered of His Passion and His Cross. Bad catholics, those who appear bad to us, are but a proportion of all catholics, and if redeeming grace has yet got to invade that proportion, and according to all its laws must triumphantly invade it, we can hardly think otherwise than that the majority of catholics will be saved. If we put all our data together, conversion can hardly be common in the Church, unless salvation is common too.

There is another point, which has already been adverted to, but which must not be omitted in the present enumeration. "When men look at a country, or a neighborhood, or a town, and pass a judgment on its religious condition, not only must they necessarily have insufficient data, but they are very liable to fall into an inaccuracy which seriously affects the value of their observations. They do not distinguish between the sinfulness of sin and the deformity of sin, which last spreads out and covers a greater extent of ground than the guilt, infecting the mariners, tainting 22 2d the whole tone and atmosphere, and altogether making a much greater show than the real sin. Much that is morally unlovely is not sin, certainly not mortal sin. And yet it catches the eye, and offends our moral sense, and is extremely odious in the sight of religion. It is, of a truth, an evidence of the existence of sin, but by no means a measure of its quantity. Very often, a newly converted man is almost as disagreeable and repulsive as he was when in his sins. His moral appearance is not improved all at once. The mellowing, softening, beautifying powers of grace, are long in their operation, and follow with slow steps the sharp decisive movements which effect conversion at the first. As it is absurd for protestants to measure the truth of the religions of two countries by the success of conquest, the perfection of the monetary system, the extension of commerce, or scientific improvements in agriculture, so is it equally a mistake to decide on the religiousness of a population by the offensive prominences of national character, or by the reigning foibles and unworthinesses of a population, or even by a low standard of moral integrity in some one or other department, peculiar to the country, place or time. In the judging of individuals, it is still more important to distinguish between moral unlovelincss and downright sin. Goodness tends to be graceful; but, in this life, there are always to each man a thousand causes which hinder its development.

The extreme severity of the punishments of purgatory is another consideration which leads the mind to contemplato the immense multitude of the saved, and of those saved with very imperfect dispositions, as the only solution of those chastisements. Purgatory goes as near to the un« riddling the riddle of the world, as any one ordinance of God which can be named. Difficulties are perpetually drifting that way, to find their explanation; and the sainti of God have turned so full a light upon those fields of firo,

THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS. 6o)

that the geography of them seems almost as familiar to us as the well-known features of the surface of the earth. The charitable practices of catholic devotion lead us to spend so much of our day amid the patience of that beautiful suffering, that it has become to us like the wards of a favorite hospital, with its familiar faces, brightening at the welcome words of consolation. It is the same fire as hell. That in itself is a terrible reflection. The revelations of the saints depict the tortures of it as fearful in the extreme. There is a consent of them, as to the immense lengths of time which souls average under that punishment — a consent fully bearing out the practice of the Church in anniversaries and foundations for masses forever. The very slightest infidelities to grace seem to be visited there with the acutest Bufferings. God Himself has bidden His saints to honor, with chaste fear and exceeding awe, the rigors of His justice, and the requirements of His purity, in that land of bitter long delay. Now, does it come natural to us to look at all this system, this terrible eighth sacrament of fire, which is the home of those souls whom the seven real sacraments of earth have not been allowed to purify completely— does it come natural to us to look at it all as simply a penal machinery invented for the saints and those most like the saints, to cut away with its vindictive sharpness the little imperfections which come of human frailty? That it should fulfil this office is most intelligible, most accordant with God's perfections, and most consolatory to souls themselves. But does not the view at once recommend itself to us, that it was an invention of God to multiDly the fruit of our Saviour's Passion; that it was intended for the great multitudes who should die in charity with God, but in imperfect charity; and, therefore, that it is, as it were, the continuance of death-bed mercies beyond the grave; and that, as such, it throws no uncertain light on the cheering supposition that most catholics are saved, especially of the poor who sorrow and suffer here?

Mention has been made, in previous chapters, of God's unaccountable contentment with so little, as requisite for salvation. Of course, purgatory goes some way towards accounting for it, but very far from the whole way. Purgatory seems too good for ungenerous souls; and yet they are crowding into it by thousands, and become beautiful amid its flames. The merits and satisfactions of our dearest Lord seem our only refuge, when we see how low it has pleased God to put the terms of our redemption. The charity of Jesus covers the multitude of the sins of His people. God sees the world through Him, not simply by a fiction imputing to us the holiness that is our Lord's, but, for His sake and by the efficacy of His Blood, actually ennobling our unworthiness, and giving a real greatness to our littleness, and a solid value to the merest intentions of our love. It is the daily delight of His justice to be limited in the operations of its righteous anger by the adorable Sacrifice of the Mass; and the glory of Jesus is the grand fundamental law of all creation. Yet, even so, God's contentment with so little is an inscrutable mercy, one of those bright lights that are dark because they are so bright, and which are rising up perpetually from the abysses of creative love. Who shall tell the thousands of souls in heaven at this hour, whom, almost to their own surprise, that marvellous contentment has exalted there? »

Are any two angels exactly in the same degree of glory? Theologians say that the graces of each radiant spirit are unlike. Perhaps, then, their glories are unequal also. If so, what innumerable degrees of bliss there must be in the angelic hierarchies! The saints we know are ranged in countless ranks. We are not told that those who are in the same rank have all an equal vision. It is of faith that the rewards of heaven differ in degree. It is revealed to us in the parables of the talents and the cities. In My Father's house are many mansions, saith our Lord. Star differeth from star in glory, is the doctrine of St. Paul. Now, there can be no exaggeration in supposing that there are at least as many different degrees of happiness in heaven as there arc degrees of happiness on earth. We know that there are as many different degrees of glory hereafter, as there are different degrees of grace here; and, as far as we can read the phenomena of grace, it would really seem as if those differences were as numerous as the individual hearts in which it dwells. This would admit of an immense variety of scales of goodness upon earth, the very lowest of which should reach heaven. And would it not be in accordance with what we know of the works of God, if heaven stooped almost down to earth, and well-nigh blended with it, only, which is truly difference enough, that the lowest there would have God's clear light full upon him, and therefore be bathed in joys which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived? This view would swiftly reach, and that by no circuitous route, the sweet conclusion for which we plead, that almost all catholics are saved.

Hell teaches the same comfortable doctrine as heaven, although in a rougher strain. Finite evil is almost infinnitely punished, limited sin almost inimitably tormented. One mortal sin is chastised eternally. There may be many in hell who have committed a less amount of sin than many who are in heaven, only they would not lay hold of the Cross of Christ, and do penance, and have easy absolution. There is no life of self-denying virtue, however lono- and however laborious, but if it ends in impenitence and mortal sin, must be continued among the unending pains of hell. One mortal sin, and straightway a death without contrition, and everlasting despair alone remains. Now 2d2 will evil be more punished than good is rewarded? Will they even be on equal terms? Theology teaches that the chastisements of hell are fur the sake of Christ far less than the wretched sufferers deserve. There is mercy even there, whence hope has long since fled, compassion even there where its tenderness seems so wholly out of place, and its forbearance thankless and unavailing. Hell is less than sin deserves. Then, is there no corner of creation where the divine justice enjoys all its rights? At least it is not in hell; for hell is less than sin deserves. 0 beautiful ubiquity of mercy! The Gospel nowhere tells us that sinners shall be punished up to the plenitude of their demerits; but it does tell us about the reward of virtue, that it shall be " good measure, and pressed down, and shaken together, and running over." You see it is in heaven only that justice shall enjoy its royalties! Shall not then God's rewarding of good be in all respects far beyond, in fulness and completeness, His punishment of evil? Shall not a little good, a very little good, be much rewarded? And is not the number who are rewarded a chief feature in the magnificence of the reward? Surely not only will heaven bo unspeakably beyond our deservings, but many will go there, whom only the generosity of divine love and the determination of persisting grace could have made deserving. These are things which we cannot know, and they are not put forward as amounting to arguments; but there seems something easy in the process by which the very existence and extremity of hell leads to the conclusion that most catholics are saved.

The providence of God in the lives of men is to each ono in particular a private revelation of His love. The biography of every one of us is to ourselves as luminously supernatural, as palpably full of divine interferences, as if it were a page out of the Old Testament history. Moreover all that is providential is also merciful. The interferencef are all on the side of love. Stern-looking accidents, when they turn their full face to us, beam with the look of love. Even our very faults are so strangely overruled that mercy can draw materials for its blessings even out of them. It is true we may easily delude ourselves. But the natural tendency to find a meaning in what happens to ourselves, and to exaggerate its significance, cannot altogether, or even nearly, account for the providential aspect which our past lives present to us, when we reflect upon them in the faith and fear of God. Our merciful Creator seems to have led us very gently, as knowing how weak and ill we are; yet He has led us plainly towards Himself. If it is not speaking of Him too familiarly, He seems to have done everything just at the right time, and in the right place, to have put nothing before us till we were ready for it and could make the most of it, to have timed His grace and apportioned it, so that we might have as little as possible the guilt of resisting grace, to have weighed even our crosses before He laid them upon us, and to have waited an auspicious moment each time He would persuade us to something fresh. He has combined events with the most consummate skill, and brought out the most wonderful results, and they have always been in our favor. There are difficulties and seeming exceptions to the ordinary course of this genial providence. But it is only at first sight that they perplex us. These very exceptions on closer investigation, no longer experience, turn out to be the most striking examples of the general rule of beneficence and love. If we ask each man separately, this is what he will tell us. "We have all of us had this private revelation. But are not God's works for the most part remarkable for their efficacy? Do not all these secret biographies of men, with their beautiful disclosures of His assiduous ministering love, bear upon this question of salvation? Has He so waited upon each of us, that we might at any time have mistaken Him for our Guardian Angel, instead of our God? and yet is not His solicitude in far the greater number of cases to have the one issue which His glory so earnestly desires? Let us dwell on one feature of His providence, the way in which Ho vouchsafes to time things. Think of the hour of death, of its surpassing importance, of its thrilling risks, of all those inward processes of which we have already spoken. Now may we not conclude, or at least with reasonable hope infer, that to most, if not to all, men, the hour cf their death is seasonably timed? They die when it is best for them to die. There arc some dangers in advance which they avoid by dying then. They die when they are in the best state for dying. Even the deaths of those who are lost may be mercifully timed. When men die young, it is perhaps because they would have lost themselves if they had lived to be old. When men die late, it is perhaps to give them time to correspond to grace, to do penance for the past, and especially that they may get rid of some evil habit which would else be their perdition, and which the mere infirmity of age will help them to abandon. When men die just as they are coming into the possession of riches, or at the outset of a smiling career of laudable ambition, it is perhaps because God sees in their natural character or in their personal circumstances some seeds of future evil, and so He takes them while all that evil lies innocently undeveloped in their souls. Who can think of what death is, and yet doubt that God's wisdom and His love are brought to bear with inexpressible sweetness both on its manner and its time? If God were pleased to tell us, we should probably be amazed at the numbers of convincing reasons that there are why each of us should die when, and where, and how we do. The very sight of so much legislation and arrangement, on the part of God, about this one final act of our probation is doubtless pouring into the souls of the Blessed at all hours delightful streams of wondering adoration and ecstatic love. Is all this true of each Christian death-bed, and are not then by far the great majority of Christians saved?

But what is it which most obviously distinguishes catholics from all other men? Surely it is the gift of faith. This, next to the Beatific Vision of Himself in heaven, is the greatest gift which God can give to His creatures: for in some respects it may be said to be greater than sanctifying grace, because it is its indispensable foundation. It is hard to realize the greatness of a gift which is so intimate to every operation of our lives. But we may gain some idea of its importance when we remember that without faith no sacraments avail, and that with the loss of faith we lose almost all the capabilities of setting ourselves right when we have sinned. It is a gift, therefore, which we should not only guard most jealously, but which we should increase by exercise; for that it is capable of increase by our own correspondence is one of those many really startling disclosures of divine love, at which nobody is startled because they are so common. We see or hear of souls wandering in the darkness, reading, arguing, writing, commenting, collating manuscripts, all in perplexity because they cannot perceive the Divinity of our Blessed Lord, while to every catholic child that sweet converting truth is plainer than the sunshine on the trees. The little fellow could not doubt it, if he would. He is so sure of it that he would be beaten to death rather than say it was not true. To others the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity presents difficulties of the most insuperable kind, how God can be One God yet Three Persons, how the Son can be evermore coequally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost be evermore coequally proceeding from the Father and the Son. The catholic finds nothing hard in it. He cannot explain it, even so far as theology arrives towards an explanation. But he knows it and sees it as distinctly as tho

34G THE GREAT MASS OF BELIEVERS.

•writing of a letter or the pages of a book. Bewilder him as you will, you cannot inject a doubt into his mind. He cannot help himself; he is more certain of the Holy Trinity, than he is of your existence who are standing by him and questioning him. 0 glorious necessity of believing, which is hardly faith, but actual contact with a supernatural world, as if the prerogative of heaven was only to see God, while earth's privilege was to touch Him in the dark with fearless venture and with thrilling love! Heaven must indeed be beautiful, if the saints can part there with their gift of faith, and not pine to have it back again! Yet this gift every catholic receives, not the faith of devils who believe and tremble, but the supernatural gift of divine faith. It is faith by which so many after years of sin, quietly and as it were naturally, swing round to their anchors, and dio well. By this gift the catholic sees far up into the unbeginning eternity of God, and beholds his own soul lying there in the lap of that eternal love. By faith he sees the unspeakable operations of the Holy Trinity with its Innascibility, Generation, and Procession. By faith he scans the numberless perfections of God. By faith he sees Jesus, God and Man, in the Blessed Sacrament. By faith he beholds Mary on her mediatorial throne. By faith the joys of heaven, the delays of purgatory, the pains of hell, are familiar to him as the hills and streams and groves where his childhood played. By faith he sees the lineaments of Jesus in his priests, and beholds the Precious Blood dropping from the hand that is raised to give him absolution. This gift is common to all, so common that it stays with us even when grace has left us, so persevering and so secure of itself that it will lodge with sin and fear no evil; and is there one sign of predestination of which so much can be said as of this transcendent gift, which of its sole self makes a creature of God into a catholic, and writes upon his brow this plain inscription of his Creator, It is My especial Will that this creature should be saved, and live with me for ever?

The Church militant on earth is the foreshadowing of the Church triumphant in heaven. The destinies of the heavenly Church are glassed and mirrored on the earthly Church, and are in some sense anticipated there. The end of the earthly Church is to be transplanted into the heavenly. Is it not a difficulty, unless authority should teach it, to think that less than the great majority of the earthly plants will not be worth transplanting? Seed is wasted in sowing; yet the earthly husbandman garners the produce of by far the greatest portion of what he sows, even when birds, and blight, and lawless footpaths, and uncertain weather, and waste, and theft have done their worst. Shall the heavenly Husbandman be worse off than they? The Church may seem a failure; but is it likely to be so in reality? God has His little flock of saints, of eminent souls whom we technically call saints. These He leads by extraordinary paths. He introduces them into a mystical world. He furnishes them with peculiar graces, and endows them with miraculous powers. He inspires them with unearthly tastes for suffering and abjection, deluges them with the most unparalleled afflictions and trials, consigns them for years to the intimate assaults, not unfrequently to the bodily possession, of demons, constantly suspends their common life by mysterious ecstasies, and then again plunges them into such pitchy darkness that they hardly know if they are in a state of grace. He transfigures all their senses, He drives them to the most appalling austerities, He animates them to the most heroic deeds of charitable daring for the good of others, He renews in them supernatural likenesses to His Blessed Son. This is not the way of salvation, nor even the way of perfection. It is the way of the saints. No one is introduced into it except by God Himself. He takes the initiative. Every one should aspire to perfection; no one can lawfully aspire to what is technically the way of the saints, namely, the ecstatic¹² Now of.-nis little flock some, as appears from the records of hagiology, fail and come to an evil end. But they are, comparatively speaking, few in number, and chiefly notable, not so much because they are so rare, as because the phenomenon is so terrific. He has two other little flocks, composed of religious, priests, laity, and many simple souls, who by love have worked themselves beyond the common way of precepts into that of counsels and of the inwardly perfect observance of the precepts. These arc two ways of perfection, often combining, often converging, the way of counsels, and the way of perfect interior observance of precepts. Neither of them are like the way of the saints We know from the lives of good people, and especially the chronicles of religious orders, that many of these little flocks go wrong and frustrate the sweet purposes of God. Some fall back into the common way, and others find no way of salvation because they refuse the way in which God has put them. But surely by far the greater number, as far as we can judge from books, persevere, and not only save their souls, but avoid purgatory, or are high in heaven. Then God has a fourth little flock, the great multitude of catholics. It is a very little one compared with the great mass of men on earth, and it is yet more divinely distinguished from them, than even the saints or the perfect are from itself. A catholic has more marks of special love multiplied upon him as compared with other men, than a saint has as compared with an ordinary catholic. Why may we not think of this fourth little flock, as we think of the others, that the failures are few, and the successes overwhelmingly numerous, especially as we have more grounds to go upon in this last case than in any of the others, both because the failure cannot be short of eternal misery, and because an equal, if not a greater, amount of divine predilection has been shown? Of those who were compelled to come to the banquet in the Gospel, there was only one who was without the wedding garment.

It may be urged, that some of the considerations, which have been here adduced, apply also to persons who are not catholics. God bo praisad if it is so! The overflow of mercy is surely not an argument against its existence. That were strange logic. Doubtless the mercy of God covers the whole earth as the waters cover the sea. It is one of our best joys to know that its abundance is beyond our gaze, and above our comprehension. But again we turn to those who are before us, to catholics. If any of these considerations apply to those outside the Church, and if moreover they are true, then a fortiori, as logicians say, that is, with tenfold greater force, will they apply to catholics. And so, whichever way we turn, the same benignant conclusion looks us always in the face.

No one can look forward without very solemn apprehensions to his final iudgment. Yet it is the deliberate conviction of our best thoughts a^d most mature reflection, that <>■ we had rather leave our final doom in the hands of the all-holy God than in those of the most merciful of sinful men. Our knowledge of God does not leave us room for a moment's hesitation. Strange to say! intimately as we know our own wretchedness, and appalled as we often are by the vision of our own sins, our sense of security in the hands of God rises in great measure from the fact that He knows us better than any one else can know us. There are so many things by which God will not judge us, and by which men would judge us, that it seems as if our deliverance from these was already half a verdict in our favor. How often in life are we accused wrongly and mistakenly! How are motives imputed to us which we never had! We lose our temper for a moment, and are judged by that fact for years to come. When we do wrong, vre often struggle manfully before we give way, but men put not these invisible struggles to our account. Full of waht of simplicity as we are, and far from perfect truth, we are on the whole always more sincere than we seem. We often have good motives for imprudent and ill-looking actions. When we often appear careless and unkind, some secret sorrow is oppressing us, or anxiety disturbing us, or responsibility harassing us. Now God sees all this rightly, and man cannot. God does not judge us by any of these things; man must. Hence it is, a strange conclusion for sinners to come to! that God loves us better than men do, because lie knows us better.

He judges us by our inward religious acts, which necessarily go for nothing with men. He judges us by the fructifying of His own gifts within us, a very slight portion of which ever becomes visible to men, and even that portion only partially visible. Moreover He judges us as He sees us in His Son. He judges us by the love which Mary, angels, and saints have for us. And finally He judges us with all our good ever collectively before II»m, while our evil is interrupted by frequent absolutions, and our sins supernaturally effaced by the Precious Blood, so that by the laws of His own redeeming love He cannot see them in the same way that men see them. Thus we are most reasonable in preferring rather to be judged by God than by men. The acutenesses of their criticism are far more to be dreaded than the niceties of His justice, when omnipotent love sits by as its assessor. Now if we judge that the great majority of catholics will not be saved, it is a human judgment; and like all human judgments, it is more rigorous than the divine, because of the ignorance and the temper of the judge. Therefore we may modestly hope that God's judgment is otherwise, and that the great majority of catholics are saved. It is only applying to the case of the multitude what we each of us find true in our own, that largeness and allowance in the Creator's judgment, which it is hopeless to look for at the tribunal of the creature.

"VVe are speaking of what we do not know. But it is at least allowable to put all these considerations in opposition to those which justly or not, give us hard and to our weakness dishonorable thoughts of God.¹³ They are not doctrines. They are not certainties. They are inferences, they are hopes, they are speculations, which are surely more in harmony with what we know of our most righteous and most compassionate Creator, than the opposite view. Even if we are wrong, which the last day alone will show, we shall be better men for having tried to think such thoughts of God as get Him more honor among men, and more love from ourselves. God knows His own secret. Blessed be His inscrutable judgment! Let the secret rest with Him. Doubt is even better for us than knowledge, when He, who is pure love, has chosen to withhold it from us.

We are speaking of catholics. If our thoughts break their bounds, and run out beyond the Church, nothing that has been said, has been said with any view to those without. I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that God is infinitely merciful to every soul, thayt no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and, as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms around each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love, in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would not hare Dim.

Footnotes

1. Lest it should be supposed that there was anything unusual in discussing this question in a practical and popular book, I would venture to remind him that it has been the common practice of catholic writers, both in Italy, France, and England. Among preachers wc have Massillon, Bourdaloue, Le Jeune, Lacordaire, Segneri, the Blessed Leonard of Port Maurice, and indeed almost all Italian Quaresimali, treating of the subject in the most alarming way. In practical and popular treatises, for reading, we have Drexelius, Bellarmine, Recupitus, D'Argentan, Bossuct in his Meditations, Bail, Da Ponte, and our own Challoner, whose meditations have been translated into various languages. In Catechisms we have Lipsin, Turlot, who is translated into various languages, and the excellent Dr. Hay. Turlot asks why preachers do not often teach, often explain, often inculcate this? And he remarks, Quasstio ha3c (de numero salvandorum) non minus est utilis quam curiosa. Also the Tesori di confidenza in Dio, published at Rome by the Propaganda press, in 1840, discusses the question at great length. Parte Seconda, p. 316. This last book, it is important to add, is on the side of the question urged in this chapter; it is important, considering 1. the date of the book, 2. the placg of its publication, 3. the press from which it issues, 4. its scriptural character and 5. its popular style, and its being written in the vernacular ↩

2. Btcnpitaa do num. pnedef. cap. ii iii. ↩

3. Suarez, lib. 6. De comparat. przedest. cap. 3. n. 6. ↩

4. Vasq. in priinani partem disp. 101. cap. 4. ↩

5. Eilluart, De certitud. prasdest. diss. 9. art. 7. ↩

6. For the argument of the fewness of the saved taken from the Fathers, Bee a dismal work published at Rome in 1752, entitled Fogginius de paucitaU udultorum fidelium salvandorum. ↩

7. Difficilmrnte si danna. Icttera seconda. ↩

8. Bergier. Dist. Theol, au mot. Elus. Traite de la Vraie Religion, t. 10, p S55. Lacordaire, Conferences, iv. 168. ↩

9. Da Ponte, De Perfect Christiana, tr. i. Lipsin, Catech. Histor. Theolog Dogmat. p. 446. De numero salvandorum. ↩

10. Psychological Enquiries, p. 130. ↩

11. Lacordairo says beautifully of the sinner as he is in the sight of God. — Dieu y reconnait encore sa main. Comme uue statue mutilee sort de la terre ou les siecles l'avaient enfouie, ainsi I'amc degradee par le peche npparait aux regards do son pere; e'est un marbre deshonorS, mais ou respire encore la vie, et auquel l'artiste supreme peut rendre sa premiere beaute, Jl y travaille avecardeur; il aime ce debris; il y frappe des coups qui emeuvent son esperance et attendrissent scs regrets. Ce n'est qu'a la mort que le mal perseverant prend une consistance a l'epreuve de l'amour divln, et que Dieu le voit comme un impardonnable ennemi. Jusquela, il appartient encore a l'architecture du bien; il est une pierre esperable de la sainte cite, et peut-etre y entrera-t-il en un lieu magnifique, qui etonnera l'innocenc* was la decouragcr Conferences de 1851. ↩

12. Many mystical theologian.", especially among the Germans, maintain that ecstasy is the natural state of unfallen man, that Adam was in an ecstatic state until the fill, and hy consequence our Blessed Lady all her life. The passage ia the text is not meant to express so much as this. I suppose that the ascetical life can produce what are technically called saints, without the predominance of the mystical element. S. Vincent of Paul looks like an instance of this. But is there any example of a canonized saint, in whom there was not a considerable admixture of the mj'stical life? Any-how it is a doctrine of great importance in the theology of the spiritual life, that no man has any right to aspire to be what is technically called a saint, still less that he has any obligation to do so, or that the pursuit of perfection in any way involves it. I venture to think that the whole controversy about the obligation of aiming at perfection would be put on a plainer footing, if the fourfold divi.-ion of good people, given in the text, were attended to: 1. the saints, who tread the ecstatic or mystical way; 2, those who aim at perfection through the counsels; 3, those who aim at perfection through the perfect interior observance of the precepts; 4, ordinarily good catholics, saving themselves by the froqv.i-ntation of the sacraments, and by obedience. ↩

13. " He (Perfc de Ravignan) then passed to a subject which was of peculiar interest to me, as touching the sorest place of a parish priest. ' Suarez,' said he, ' has a discussion on the fewness of the saved, whether this is said with reference to the world or the Church; and he applies it to the world but not to the Church. I think he is right; this is the result of a ministry of twenty years in which Ihave necessarily had large experience: it is the feeling also of our fathers generally. You know that the Church teaches that attrition only, combined with the sacrament of penitence, avails to salvation, attrition arising from motives of fear rather than of love. Contrition by itself, one act of pure love by the soul, avails even without the Sacrament, if there be a firm purpose and desire to receive it. God has no desire for the sinner's death. Jansenism has done great harm to this subject, by inspiring a sort of despair which is most dangerous.' I observed that purgatory was the necessary complement of such a doctrine. 'It is so,' said he, 'and though God is alone the judge of the sufficiency of those acts of the dying, yet we may hope that a great number come within the terms of salvation, whatever purifying process they may afterwards require.'" — Allies. Journal in France. ↩